Lecture 3 Morphemic structure of English and Ukrainian words

Lviv National University
named after Ivan Franko
Lexicology
Department of translation studies and contrastive
linguistics named after Hryhoriy Kochur
Nadiya Andreichuk, associate-professor[email protected]

Whatever mankind creates in the
way of civilization is based on
forms. There are forms of art,
literature, forms of social life etc.,
and it is these which are
characteristic of a certain
structural system.
Hans Marchand

1. The word as a fundamental unit of the
language
1.1. Some general problems of the theory of
the word
1.2. Criteria of the definition
2. Morphemes, free and bound forms
3. Aims and principles of morphemic
analysis
4. Contrastive analysis of the morphemic
structure of English and Ukrainian
word.

Ф
APPROACHES TO DEFINITION
the most complex problem in the
analysis of linguistic structure
In typologically different groups of languages the
criteria employed in establishing the definition of
word are of different types
each group of languages constitutes a separate
system with its own patterns of formation and own
types of linguistic units.

Any unit can be considered unit of the
language on condition it:
possesses external (sound) form and
semantic content,
is not created in the process of speech but
used as something already existing and only
reproduced in speech

fundamental assumption
each linguistic unit has a constant and
specific meaning
Two possible main directions of linguistic
research:
phonetics - we study the speech event
without reference to its meaning
Semantics - we study the relation of the
event to the features of meaning

Each combination of signaling units is arbitrarily
assigned to some features of the practical world.
Linguistic study must start from the form not from
the meaning.
Each linguistic form has a constant and definite
meaning, different from the meaning of any other
linguistic form in the same language.
If the forms are different their meanings are also
different.

should indicate the most essential
characteristic features of the notion
expressed by the term, including the
features by which this notion is
distinguished from other similar notions.
For instance, in defining the word one must
distinguish it from other linguistic units,
such as the phoneme, the morpheme, or the
word-combination

In Ferdinand de Saussure’s opinion „the
notion of the word is not compatible with
our idea of a concrete language unit”
Sharl Balli also considered this
notion one of the most ambiguous
occurring in linguistics

Though in different languages words can be
singled out of the stream of speech differently and
that’s why it may be difficult to suggest the
definition common for all languages but still it is
not impossible.
As O.I.Smirnitskiy remarked that the versatility of
peculiarities of different languages cannot prevent
us from defining the word as the linguistic unit in
general, because despite this versatility there are
features which all words possess, great as the
deviations from typical cases may be

syntactic criterion
Dionisius Frakiyskiy: the word is the smallest part
of the sentence.
With different modifications this criterion has
been applied by a lot of scientists. Henry Sweet
defined the word as “a minimum sentence” and
Leonard Bloomfield as “minimum free form”.

W.Humboldt, Е.Zivers, D.Kudriavskyy
identified the sentence with the logical statement
and considered the smallest part of the sentence the word - the sign of a separate notion
psychological criterion
the word is as the linguistic equivalent of a
separate concept

A word is an articulate sound-symbol in its aspect of
denoting something which is spoken about
(A.H.Gardiner)
semantic criterion
connected discourse, if analyzed from the semantic
point of view, “will fall into a certain number of
meaningful segments which are ultimately
composed of meaningful units. These meaningful
units are termed words” (S. Ulmann)

combines the semantic, phonological and
grammatical criteria and advances a formula which
underlies many subsequent definitions, both abroad
and in our country: “A word is an association of
a particular meaning with a particular group
of sounds capable of a particular
grammatical employment”

important features of the word
The word is a dialectical unity of form and
content.
2. The word is internally stable (in terms of the order
of the component morphemes).
3. The word is the minimum significant unit capable
of functioning alone and characterized by
positional mobility (permutable with other words
in the sentence).
This makes the basis for the opposition between the
word and the phoneme, and the word and the
morpheme. The phoneme and the morpheme cannot
function otherwise than in the word
1.

A linguistic form which is never spoken alone is a
bound form, all others are free forms.
Some linguistic forms bear partial phoneticsemantic resemblances to other forms: e.g. John
ran, John fell, Bill ran, Bill fell; Johnny, Billy;
playing, dancing; blackberry, cranberry,
strawberry.
A linguistic form which bears a partial phoneticsemantic resemblance to some other linguistic
form, is a complex form.

A linguistic form which bears no partial
phonetic-semantic resemblance to any other
form is a simple form or morpheme.
Thus, play, dance, cran-, -y, -ing are
morphemes.
The term morpheme is derived from Greek
morphe - form and -eme. The Greek suffix
-eme has been adopted by linguists to
denote the smallest unit or the minimum
distinctive feature.

A morpheme can be described phonetically, since it
consists of one or more phonemes. e.g. the
morpheme pin bears a phonetic resemblance to
other morphemes, such as pig, pen, tin, ten. On the
basis of these resemblances it can be analyzed and
described in terms of three phonemes, but, since
these resemblances are not connected with
resemblances of meaning, we cannot attribute any
meaning to the phonemes.

It is the morpheme that is the smallest
meaningful unit of form. The meaning of a
morpheme is a sememe.
The linguists assume that each sememe is a
constant and definite unit of meaning,
different from all other meanings in the
language.

Since every complex form is made up entirely of
morphemes, a complete list of morphemes would
account for all the phonetic forms of a language.
The total stock of morphemes in a language is its
lexicon.
However, if we knew the lexicon of a language, and
had a reasonably accurate knowledge of each
sememe, we might still fail to understand the forms
of this language. Every utterance contains some
significant features that are not accounted for by the
lexicon.

A. Secondary words, containing free forms:
1. Compound words, containing more than
one free form: door-knob, wild-animal-tamer. The
included free forms are the members of the
compound word: in our examples, the members
are the words door, knob, tamer, and the phrase
wild animal.
2. Derived secondary words, containing one
free form: boyish, old-maidish. The included free
form is called the underlying form; in our
examples the underlying forms are the word boy
and the phrase old maid.

the role of morphemes
According to the role morphemes play in
constructing words, morphemes are subdivided into
roots and affixes ( lat. affixus - прикрiплений).
The latter are further subdivided, according to their
position, into prefixes, suffixes and infixes, and
according to their function and meaning, into
derivational and functional affixes, the latter
also called outer formatives. (The term was
suggested by E.Nida as contrasted to inner
formatives which is equivalent to our term
derivational affixes.)

When functional affix is stripped from the word,
what remains is a stem (or a base).
The stem expresses the lexical meaning. In many
cases, the base is also the root. The principles of
singling out stems and roots are different. Roots are
semantic cores of words. Stems are parts of words
directly connected with inflectional affixes, thus
singled out on structural principle.
Root and stem can coincide but they should be
viewed from different angles. In books, for example
the element to which the affix -s is added
corresponds to the word’s root.

In other cases, however, an affix can be added to a
larger unit than a root.
This happens in words such as blackened, in which
the past tense affix -ed is added to the verbal stem
blacken - a unit consisting of the root morpheme
black and the suffix -en.
Thus stems may differ structurally, they may be
root stems (work -er), derived stems (beauti-ful
-ly) and compound stems (long-hair -ed).

Stems are combined with definite affixes and their
combinability or valency depends on several reasons:
grammatical category of stems, e.g. some suffixes can
be added only to nouns (adjectives, verbs etc.),
semantic content of stems and affixes, e.g. stems
negative in meaning cannot tackle prefixes of
negation,
phonetic peculiarities of stems and affixes, e.g. some
stems ending in lip consonants take suffixes with
initial vowel, e.g. dist-ance.

Sometimes root morphemes can come close to
affixes when their meaning is weakened like:
1) -man in seaman, postman; -люб in книголюб,
правдолюб;
2) tele- in telescope, telephone or –graph in phonograph, telegraph. Such morphemes are sometimes
called semi-affixes.
O.Smirnitskyy views such cases as specific root
morphemes which can be used only in compounds
and come close either to suffixal or prefixal
morphemes

Functional affixes convey grammatical meaning.
They build different forms of one and the same word.
Complete sets of all the various forms of a word
when considered as inflectional patterns, such as
declentions or conjugations, are termed paradigms.
An inflectional paradigm is therefore defined as
the system of grammatical forms characteristic of a
word. e.g. near, nearer, nearest; son, sons, son’s,
sons’.

Lexical derivatives make up a derivational or
lexical paradigm. Thus, for instance, from the
word love a number of derivative words can be
generated: love, lovely, loveliness, loveless, lover,
loving, lovingly, lovable, beloved.

Three criteria are commonly used to help
distinguish between inflexional and derivational
affixes.
1) Inflexion does not change either the part of
speech or the type of meaning found in the word
to which it applies

37. A second property of inflexional affixes has to do with the order in which they are combined with a stem relative to derivational affixes.

A third criterion for distinguishing between
inflexional and derivational affixes has to do with
productivity, the relative freedom with which they
can combine with stems of the appropriate category.
Inflexional affixes typically have relatively few
exceptions. The suffix -s, for example, can combine
with virtually any noun that allows a plural form. In
contrast, derivational affixes characteristically apply
to restricted classes of stems. Thus -ize can combine
with only certain adjectives to form a verb.
modern -ize
* new-ize
legal-ize
* lawful-ize

Morphological analysis
The theoretical foundations of word analysis in
terms of its morphological structure apply both to
English and Ukrainian languages. But according to
the classification of Indo-European languages
English and Ukrainian belong to different types of
flexional languages. English is synthetic and
Ukrainian is analytic.
We never find pure synthesis or analysis in any
language. But English is notably analytic. There are
only seven inflectional affixes in it (all suffixes).
Ukrainian has dozens of inflectional affixes and
encodes contrasts not represented in English.

1. Suffixes - realize their meaning only in
connection with the root morpheme. For example,
suffixes can express the meaning of generalized
property, abstract notion when combined with roots
of adjectives denoting concrete properties or
features of objects: добр-от-а - добр-ий, хоробрiсть - хоробр-ий, крут-изн-а - крут-ий.
The suffix being combined with the root specifies or
changes the content of the word and together with
the ending indicates what part of speech it belongs
to. Suffixes can transform the word into another part
of speech.

2. Prefixes - differ from derivational suffixes
because they are added to the whole word and not to
the root and can't transform the word into another
part of speech, e.g. весна - провесна, давнiй прадавнiй, ходити - заходити, звично незвично.
3. Postfixes - - ся serves to create reflexive verbs:
лити - литися, солодкий - насолоджуватися.
4. Infixes - are used to connect two or more roots
thus occur within a stem. In Ukrainian this function
can be performed by three vowels : о, е, є, e.g.
лiсотундра, першодрукар, працездатний,
життєрадiсний.

form-creating (формотворчi) and word-
changing (словозмiннi).
Form-creating affixes differ from derivational as they
are combined with the stem of one and the same
word while derivational affixes are combined with
the stem to create a new word.
Form-creating suffixes are standardized, obligatory
for all the words belonging to the part of speech
within which they create a definite system of wordforms (словоформи)

expresses the connections of words with other words in
word-combinations or sentences.
Types of declention (вiдмiнювання) of nouns, adjectives,
numerals, pronouns are differentiated through the system
of endings which reflect grammatical meanings of case,
gender and number or only case (in cardinal numerals).
Verbs have a complicated system of conjugation
(дiєвiдмiнювання). Main indicators of the categories of
person, gender and number are endings. Endings are highly
abstract. They can be easily attached to all the words
belonging to a certain type of declenation or conjugation
and create a definite system of word-forms.

II. Derived words made up of roots, prefixes
and suffixes:
1. Words consisting of the root and the suffix:
скрип-к-а, iстор-ичн-ий.
Several suffixes can be used.
2. Words consisting of the root and the prefix: допис, пере-клад.
3. Combination of the root with prefixes and
suffixes: пере-стриб-ну-ти, про-свiт-и-ти, запев-ни-ти.
III. Compound words created by combining
two stems with or without infix: лiсостеп,
скороход.